I’m so excited to announce that Foe Destroyer will be returning to the Dallas Theater Center as the on-stage band for The Rocky Horror Show next month. We’ll be joined by Ben Bohorquez of the Funky Knuckles on sax/keys and our new friend and DFW local Kwinton Gray on keys.

For those who saw us in last year’s production of Fly By Night, or in 2008 when Oso Closo played in The Who’s Tommy, this will be similar in that the DTC has once again given us the unusual privilege of being involved in rehearsals from day one. As a result we will be fully integrated into the show, moving amongst the cast on wireless instruments and interacting with the story. Also we will have the chance to re-imagine the music from scratch while still paying homage to the original. It may sound strange, but musicals are almost never done this way. Typically the band is brought in at the last minute and sits in chairs reading music off of music stands (boring!). The DTC is doing it right, so come enjoy! The director Joel Ferrell is doing a hilarious, fearless version and the entire cast of actors, singers, and dancers are all incredibly talented.

BTW if you are new to Rocky Horror, just know this might not be the best one to bring your Grandma or young child to.

You can find tickets at www.dallastheatercenter.org, the show runs Sept 11 – Oct 19.

Foe Destroyer is once again a musical band, this time in New York at the off-broadway theater Playwrights Horizons. We’ve been rehearsing the last week or so and now we are into previews, which means you can come see it, even though we’ll still be making some small changes here and there before the official opening on June 10. It’s a really beautiful show, and it’s getting better and tighter all the time. We have an even bigger role now than we did at the Dallas Theater Center, doing prop hand-offs and sound cues. So if you’re in New York any time between now and the end of June (or possibly longer if it gets extended) come see it!

Just did three weeks of Snarky Puppy last month, then jumped on a plane to Asheville NC to tour down with Foe Destroyer and friends and I’m finally back in Austin, just in time for SXSW festivities. I’m happy to be joined by Danny and Cade from Foe Destroyer plus our crew of friends who are launching their new media company called BKLYN 1834. They’ve got a house down here for the next couple of weeks and there will be all kinds of music & media happening, including screen printing, 3D printing, recording and showcases. Foe Destroyer has a show at the Scoot Inn Sunday the 9th at 11 PM with a local singer songwriter Dwight Smith, who I’ve been wanting to play with for awhile. And we’ll be doing a showcase at the BKLYN 1834 house Monday night, the 10th. Also I just found out my fellow Snark and musical genius friend Cory Henry is down here to demo Seaboard, so I’ll definitely be trying to jam with him.

In nerdy news, I finished transcribing and charting all the songs for the new Snarky Puppy album for the official Snarky Puppy songbook, so those will be available very soon through Lulu.

Sooo yeah! Snarky Puppy, the instrumental jazz fusion band consisting of about 500 technical wizards that make music for dorks — has won a Grammy!! It’s pretty much the craziest thing of all time. The band has definitely been growing in popularity anyway, selling out large venues and getting the attention of some important people. But still!

Of course, it would be for the one album I’m not on. Foe Destroyer was right in the middle of the CD release tour for our debut album we put out March 6 when these guys were recording Family Dinner in Virginia with Lalah Hathaway and several other incredible singers. But I’m so thankful to Mike and the other guys for letting me come along for the ride and enjoy the Grammy experience. It was surreal. Highlights include: watching Mark Lettieri drink whiskey out of a Grammy (with the blessing of the man that actually makes them by hand), Boys 2 Men putting on a surprisingly fantastic show at the after party, including all your favorite hits from middle school dances, meeting Maria Schneider and Quincy Jones, listening to Yoko Ono ramble perfectly about multiple universes, eating McDonalds–our first meal together as a Grammy-winning band–with my foodie, yelp-obsessed bandmates out of pure desperation when it was literally the only option in the Staples center, and Shaun Martin instigating bouts of joyous group-yelling at various times throughout the night.

The experience has also left me with the desire to practice more and write more to feel like I truly deserve to be on that stage. So I’m making it my goal to work harder this year on Foe Destroyer, Snarky Puppy, and everything else I do. Including updating this website! See you soon!

Hey! I’ve been so busy I’ve been kind of ignoring this blog. But it’s cool, I don’t think anyone really minds. On the off chance that you are actually reading this I wanted to announce that the band I’ve been working on for the last 3 years or so, Foe Destroyer, has finally released its first album! We love it, we are extremely proud. There are some really great people that helped us with it, but quite a bit was completely home recorded/produced/mixed, and the cases the CDs come in were designed by us and hand-printed by Danny. All of the information as well as the ability to stream the entire thing, buy it physically or digitally, and share it with people can be found at our official website and at our Bandcamp page. Thanks for keeping up with me and live long and prosper.

This is a quick note to let you know about a show we’ve recently booked that I’m especially excited about. Myself, Bob Lanzetti and Mark Lettieri (the three guitar players in Snarky Puppy) have booked a night of our respective original music at Shapeshifter Lab in Brooklyn NY, the same venue that Snarky recently recorded its live CD/DVD groundUp. Those guys each have their own original instrumental fusion bands, and my set will be Foe Destroyer. At the end you have to decide who you love the most. Just kidding. But if you want to just voluntarily tell us you love us the most, that’s totally acceptable.

It’s happening Tuesday August 14!

I’ll have some ticket info soon. In the meantime, enjoy this amazing photo of Mark Lettieri:

That’s right, my friends: Oso Closo is finally playing again. It’s happening in Dallas and soon. It will be on Friday March 23 at Geoff Lloyd’s new studio/venue, Central Tracks (2815 Main St.). This is a really great space that Geoff is opening in the heart of Deep Ellum, and he’s working overtime in the next few weeks to get it ready for us. We’re really excited to bring attention to a deserving new Dallas venue, especially since Geoff has been such an Oso supporter. It’s going to be a great night of music, Foe Destroyer will be playing as well as our friends Rademacher from California.

Also, spookily, just this morning I got an email with an article that Sarah Crisman wrote about Oso Closo, seemingly totally unrelated to this as-yet-undisclosed news. Almost like some sort of collective consciousness thing… only…. what does it mean? Maybe she willed it to happen with her Voodoo powers she’s secretly been honing over the last two years for just this purpose? We may never know. Do we really have free will, or are we just organic machines, firing synapses predictably, inescapably, toward our destiny? Guess what number I’m thinking in my head between 1 and 50.

Mike just posted this a couple of days ago, it’s the first track off of the upcoming live cd/dvd project that we recorded last December in Brooklyn. You can see me poke my head out for a second amongst the 20-odd musicians.

So Mike is starting a record label called groundUp that will be a subsidiary of the label Snarky Puppy is currently on, Ropeadope, which is pretty exciting! The big label kickoff/cd release show is happening in NYC in four days, and I am sadly missing it. …Anyone want to buy me and Erin plane tickets? Majorly good karma.

I just finished turning the Foe Destroyer homepage into a WordPress site and there was so much about it that seemed to work better in the long run that I decided to use WordPress here too. I do sort of miss the sliding effect from the last site. That was cool. But I also stole that code from Flavors.me, which I was probably not strictly-speaking supposed to do. So (in the words of my favorite non-wife roommate, Odin) there’s that.

And now, in true blogging fashion, I present to you a Pros and Cons List for the new site –>

PROS of the new site:

1. I can blog now. I think that’s a “pro”. I guess we’ll see.
2. The calendar works a lot better. Before I was hard coding every line every time I would update. Which meant for all practical purposes I was not updating. Now you can actually go look at my upcoming gigs and feel fairly confident that what you’re seeing is true!
3. The music is all organized with categories and tags, which makes things more fun and useful.
4. There’s a discography page now, and it looks so real.
5. You can search for stuff (over there on the left).
6. My visage isn’t anymore looming over you, judging your every click. But I did leave it as the splash page, so that it can continue to bless Derrek Luke.

CONS of the new site:

No more slidey effect Until I can find a WordPress theme that has that feature. The hunt is on!